Scientific Discrepancies

[Condraz23]

Hello everyone.

All world religions have certain scientific discrepancies, and Hinduism is no exception. According to the Vedas, the Sun is represented as riding in a chariot, and is described as the husband of dawn. However, most scientists believe that the Earth rotates around the Sun. Also, most members of the scientific community reject the hypothesis that the Sun is capable of complex reasoning and human-like intelligence.

What exactly do most Hindus believe? Is it possible that the various anecdotes found within the Vedas are simply metaphoric expressions used to personify natual phenomena, or should they be interpreted as literal fact?

[adren@line]

the vast majority of Hindus believe in whatever science teaches and in evolution.

Much of what is in the Vedas is symbolic and metaphorical. There are some things such as the Purusha creation myth which were interpreted literally but overall anything to do with science is left to science.

The Indians were the first to believe in a heliocentric model of the solar system, so it wouldn't make much sense for them to interpret such a story literally.

[premjan]

The Aryans were nature worshippers, and animated various aspects of nature into Gods. A bit unlike the Greeks who thought less literally and had more of a royal pantheon without as literal a mapping to forces of nature. E.g. there is no Aryan war God, but there is one for death (Yama). The Aryans were also supposed to consume some sort of narcotic called Soma (ephedra?) which gave them visions of these Gods and helped them to write lyrical poetry (with hidden metaphors in many cases - e.g. see Sri Aurobindo on the interpretation) which has been compiled by one Vyasa into a set of books called the Vedas. Multiple recensions of the Vedas used to exist but I think only one is extant. Much of the meaning was forgotten due to the gradual evolution of the language but the metrical chanting of these verses was maintained without loss of the actual lyrics over very substantial periods of time. The Aryans evidently preferred chant and poetry to visual representation (unlike the Chinese) and also did not create elaborate houses of worship until a later stage. There is some indication that they included peoples with experience of Arctic midnight sun, and perhaps their homeland was once the Altai mountains of Russia prior to their migration to India.

The exoteric meaning of Indra for instance is as a weather god and king of heaven, wielder of the thunderbolt. The esoteric meaning is a reference to the mind as ruler of the senses. Vayu may refer exoterically to the god of wind and esoterically to respiration as the basis of life. Agni the god of fire is esoterically a reference to the spirit or will. And so on.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Aurobindo#Discovering_the_hidden_meaning_of_the_Vedas

[aupmanyav]

Don't see Swami Dayananda or Aurobiondo for explanation on Vedas. Griffiths translation is quite satisfactory.

Maharshi VedaVyas (Badarayana, who is also supposed to be the author of Mahabharata, SrimadbhagawadPurana, and another very important text, the Brahmasutra) compiled the already existing Vedas. Then he gave their care to his disciples, RigVeda to Paila, AtharvaVeda to Sumantu, SamaVeda to Jaimini, YajurVeda to Vaishampayana, and SrimadBhagawadPurana to Lomaharsana (Vayu Purana). Is it not surprising that one man is supposed to have compiled/written all the important texts of Hinduism, and then too, by a Shudra? Only Ramayana was written by another person, Valmiki, who also was a Shudra.

In my humble and long-held opinion, Altai is not far enough or closer to North Pole; Aryans hailed from Arctic regions (Don't know Siberia or Scandinavia, more that 75 deg. North). Sun is also described as revolving like a wheel in the sky ('chakravat' - like a wheel - it went round the axis for seven months never setting in the process). Aryans knew prolonged thirty-day dawns (thirty sisters), of course visualised them as Sun's wives also. They were afraid of long dark Arctic nights of upto three months, and performed Ashwamedha (horse) sacrifice and other Soma sacrifices to strengthen Indra's horse that he may be able to rescue the sun from the dungeons where the demons of darkness had imprisoned him. The Zoroastrian Avesta (and Ahur Mazda) says that a person who dies in long night should be kept in a trench till the sun rises again when his/her last rights should be conducted. Bheeshma in Mahabharata also waited for the sun to be in ascendence when he chose to die (he had been given a boon to be able to choose the time of his death).

[Styrofoamdeity]

For the most part Asian religions have no difficulties in ascribing their creation mythologies to nonscientific conjecture and allegory. Modern Shinto, for example, uses the Kojiki's allegorical creation of Japan and the world as part of its canon, but no one mistakes it for science. I have never heard in my quarter century in Japan a Japanese who did not accept evolution or the big bang, even if they are nominally Shinto.

I have likewise never heard of a Hindu scientist worried about offending Hindu traditionalists with scientific explanations of earth history.

[adren@line]

Don't see Swami Dayananda or Aurobiondo for explanation on Vedas. Griffiths translation is quite satisfactory.

Maharshi VedaVyas (Badarayana, who is also supposed to be the author of Mahabharata, SrimadbhagawadPurana, and another very important text, the Brahmasutra) compiled the already existing Vedas. Then he gave their care to his disciples, RigVeda to Paila, AtharvaVeda to Sumantu, SamaVeda to Jaimini, YajurVeda to Vaishampayana, and SrimadBhagawadPurana to Lomaharsana (Vayu Purana). Is it not surprising that one man is supposed to have compiled/written all the important texts of Hinduism, and then too, by a Shudra? Only Ramayana was written by another person, Valmiki, who also was a Shudra.

In my humble and long-held opinion, Altai is not far enough or closer to North Pole; Aryans hailed from Arctic regions (Don't know Siberia or Scandinavia, more that 75 deg. North). Sun is also described as revolving like a wheel in the sky ('chakravat' - like a wheel - it went round the axis for seven months never setting in the process). Aryans knew prolonged thirty-day dawns (thirty sisters), of course visualised them as Sun's wives also. They were afraid of long dark Arctic nights of upto three months, and performed Ashwamedha (horse) sacrifice and other Soma sacrifices to strengthen Indra's horse that he may be able to rescue the sun from the dungeons where the demons of darkness had imprisoned him. The Zoroastrian Avesta (and Ahur Mazda) says that a person who dies in long night should be kept in a trench till the sun rises again when his/her last rights should be conducted. Bheeshma in Mahabharata also waited for the sun to be in ascendence when he chose to die (he had been given a boon to be able to choose the time of his death).
sorry bro, but the Griffith translations are complete garbage. I have talked to many people fluent in Sanskrit and they have told me that his translations are way off, and in many cases racially motivated (typical of an European Indologist).

[aupmanyav]

At least it tries for a translation, what Swami Dayanand and Aurobindo do is mutilation.

[adren@line]

Im not very familiar with those translations. Whats wrong with them?

[premjan]

Altai is recommended mainly for its descriptions of Mount Meru - as the Altai Tagh are also known as the Golden Mountains. The stories in the Vedas were probably a synthesis of the experiences of multiple related cultures, some probably from nearer the north pole.

[aupmanyav]

One very important characterstic of Meru - not vedic but Mahabharata/Surya Siddhanta/Bhaskaracharya (i.e., early last millenium) - A day of six months and a night of six months. Arjuna is reported to have visited Mount Meru.

[premjan]

That mount meru is simply an astronomical abstraction as no real mountain could satisfy those conditions. But the mountain is also said to have been golden-colored, and so are the Altai.

[aupmanyav]

All snow covered mountains in rising or setting suns are golden (kangchenjunga). Of course, Arctic does not have mountains.

[Philippe*]

I have read the Secret of the Veda and the Hymns of the mystic fire from Sri Aurobindo. I am sceptic not only about the technical part but also about the poetic and spiritual aspect of the translations from European scholars of the XIXth century. I have a full translation in French from the XIXth, but it isn't reliable, another better recent translation from Jean Varenne but there are just parts not the whole. In English you can find interesting materials about the Vedas on vedah.com.

About Ralph T.H.Griffith the translator of the text (1896) on Sacred texts.com : "His translation of the Rigveda follows the text of Max Müller's six-volume Sanskrit edition. His readings generally follow the work of the great scholar Sayana who was Prime Minister at the court of the King of Vijaynagar - in what is now the District of Bellary in the Indian state of Karnataka - in the fourteenth century." - Wikipedia. Yes there was also for sure an esoteric aspect during a time when the terminology for abstract concepts wasn't developed and when the symbolism ruled the society, this is found throughout the vedic culture, the concepts in Upanishads and Vedanta haven't sprung out of nowhere, the western scholars of the XIXth century missed the point.

Sri Aurobindo is quite critical with Sayana's work in the Hymns to the mystic fire:
"Sayana, the great commentator, gives us a ritualistic and where necessary a tentatively mythical or historical sense to the Riks, very rarely does he put forward any higher meaning though sometimes he lets a higher sense come through or puts it as an alternative as if in despair of finding out some ritualistic or mythical interpretation. But still he does not reject the spiritual authority of the Veda or deny that there is a higher truth contained in the Riks. This last development was left to our own times and popularised by occidental scholars.

The European scholars took up the ritualistic tradition, but for the rest they dropped Sayana overboard and went on to make their own etymological explanation of the words, or build up their own conjectural meanings of the Vedic verses and gave a new presentation often arbitrary and imaginative. What they sought for in the Veda was the early history of India, its society, institutions, customs, a civilisation-picture of the times. They invented the theory based on the difference of languages of an Aryan invasion from the north, an invasion of a Dravidian India of which the Indians themselves had no memory or tradition and of which there is no record in their epic or classical literature. The Vedic religion was in this account only a worship of Nature-Gods full of solar myths and consecrated by sacrifices and a sacrificial liturgy primitive enough in its ideas and contents, and it is these barbaric prayers that are the much vaunted, haloed and apotheosized Veda."

Philippe

[Philippe*]

At least it tries for a translation, what Swami Dayanand and Aurobindo do is mutilation.

Why is it mutilation ? I don't know Sanskrit enough but I have always read the contrary, moreover Dayanand and Sri Aurobindo are much more consistent with the Indian tradition contrary to the works of these eurocentric scholars that have contributed to lower so far the vedic culture in India and the rest of the world with slight arguments but also sometimes dubious reasons.

A quote from Max Müller from a letter to his wife : "The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years."

Though he took the view that Christian morality was superior to Vedic traditions, his Gifford lectures rejected the concept of direct divine revelation in favour of a trancendental model of spiritual insight, which, in his view, was perfected in the Vedanta. However, at the very end of his life he embarrassed some members of the Brahmo Samaj when he wrote to them asking them to declare that their version of Hinduism was now a form of Christianity, and that they had become Christians.
Wikipedia

Moreover Sri Aurobindo just translated parts of the Rig Veda mainly the hymns to Agni and Dayanand didn't do long translations, they hardly have mutilated anything.

Philippe

[aupmanyav]

I respect your different views, but I do not look for ' higher meaning', I look for a correct translation and will make the higher meaning myself. I do not go for esoteric meanings. I like to call a spade a spade.

[premjan]

All snow covered mountains in rising or setting suns are golden (kangchenjunga). Of course, Arctic does not have mountains.
The name, in Turkic Alytau or Altay, means Al (gold), tau (mount); in Mongolian Алтайн нуруу Altain nuruu, the "Mountains of Gold". The proposed Altaic language family takes its name from the mountain range.Altai literally means golden. So does Kanchen of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altay_Mountains